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The Union City Planning Commission rejected a historian’s request to grant
landmark status to the building which housed the Silver Dollar Cafe and
Tavern for nearly 70 years. (Image courtesy Union City)

The Union City Planning Commission has rejected a historian’s request to grant landmark status to a defunct bar built in the Historic Alvarado District in the 1930s.

The commission voted 4-1 on against the request on Dec. 21, with Commissioner Jo Ann Lew dissenting, and the City Council is scheduled to take up the matter on Tuesday.

Timothy Swenson, a local historian, wants the building where the Silver Dollar Café and Tavern formerly operated for roughly 70 years to be placed under the city’s Landmark and Historic Preservation overlay zone. It closed for business about 10 years ago.

Jian Jiang, the current owner of the property at 3861 Horner St., plans to develop a residential mixed-use project there and on other nearby parcels.

“I think this building should have some significance to it, and it would be nice to have it not be demolished,” Swenson said at the meeting.

Swenson is a past president of the Union City Historical Museum and a current board member for the Washington Township Museum of Local History in Fremont. He also wrote and hosts the Alvarado Walking Tour.

“If you talk to people from Alvarado, they may say, ‘Hey, I spent a lifetime in Alvarado, this is a building from my childhood, it’s been significant to me,’ ” he told commissioners.

But an evaluation of the building’s historical eligibility prepared for Union City by a consultant countered some of Swenson’s arguments.

City staff concluded based upon the report that the trapezoidal building with octagonal windows doesn’t exemplify or reflect “a special element of the city’s cultural, social, economic, political, aesthetic, architectural or natural history,” and that its materials and design are not unique.

“Extensive research has not revealed any important associations between this particular business and the commercial development of Alvarado. Nor is there evidence that the bar was a significant cultural or social locus for the community,” the staff’s report adds.

Kara Brunzell, whose company Brunzell Historical evaluated the building, said the Silver Dollar also failed to meet the historical criteria because it wasn’t associated with important figures of the past. The Santos family had built the bar and run the business for many years.

“Although members of the Santos family were active in the local community in various capacities during their lifetimes and were somewhat prominent as local business operators, research does not indicate that they were important to local history or influenced historical trends,” the report says.

Although Lew voted against denying the request, she expressed some skepticism about the building’s significance.

“Say it gets a historical designation, you want that to sit there as it is for decades and decades and decades with no commerce, unused?” she asked Swenson. “I mean, a lot of people would say it’s an eyesore.”

Swenson replied that one of the older buildings in town, where Bronco Billy’s Pizza Palace is currently located on Smith Street, was set for demolition decades ago too because the council at the time thought it was an eyesore. But a new owner rehabilitated it and preserved some of its historic flare.

Swenson said he has no specific long-term vision for the property, only a hope that it would be preserved for future use.

Lupe St. Denis, who lives near the old saloon, said the city needs to work with the owner of the property to come up with a creative use for the building instead of putting in more “stack and pack” housing there.

“If there’s no historical significance to the Silver Dollar, certainly there’s a uniqueness that should be preserved,” she told the commission.

“Let’s use some imagination here. Why is it the first impulse is to tear it down?” she added.

The historic zoning overlay would not preclude the building from being demolished; it would only add a more “strenuous” review process if any changes are proposed, according to city planning staff.

The special zoning would also require the property owner to keep the building in good shape.

Joseph Geha is a multimedia journalist covering Fremont, Newark, and Union City for the Bay Area News Group, and is based at The Argus. His prior work has been seen in multiple Bay Area news outlets, including SF Weekly, as well as on KQED and KLIV radio. He is a graduate of California State University, East Bay (Hayward), and is a Fremont native. He is a lifelong Oakland Athletics fan.